Chapter 61 61. What is Real and Fake?
The key felt impossibly heavy in my palm.
Above me, music thumped through the floorboards. Bass pressed against the concrete walls. Drunken voices rose and fell.
I stared at the locked door. Now? While they were distracted?
Then I looked down at myself. Torn shirt, matted hair, wrists ringed in purple. If I walked into that party like this, someone would notice. Ronan would drag me back.
I had to wait until the noise died and people left.
I closed my fist around the key and curled in on myself. Just wait.
Hours crawled by. Maybe two, maybe four, until the music finally stopped. Voices grew quieter, doors opened and closed, cars started outside, engines fading into the distance.
Every muscle protested as I stood up. The room spinned, but I steadied myself against the wall, breathing through the dizziness. Two days without food. Barely any water.
Sliding the key into the lock and turning with a soft click, the door opened. I climbed the stairs slowly. At the top, I pressed my ear against the door and listened.
There was movement, but it was distant.
Opening it a crack, the hallway was empty. Beyond it, bodies sprawled across couches. Empty bottles littered every surface. Someone snored loudly. The smell of alcohol and smoke hung thick.
I slipped out, keeping to the walls. My bare feet made no sound... but a figure moved ahead and I froze.
A middle-aged man picking up bottles, shoving them into a trash bag. He looked up and saw me.
"I... I..." My mouth opened but no words formed. I waited for him to yell, to call for Ronan.
After seconds of fiddling with the hem of my shirt and waiting, he bowed his head and went back to cleaning.
I exhaled in relief, and in no time, I was outside. I gulped down the cold night air and rubbed my arms for warmth.
The driveway was packed with expensive cars parked haphazardly.
And there was my car. Still where I'd left it.
I ran to it, praying the door was unlocked with keys still intact.
"Thank God," I muttered when I spotted the dangling keys.
Just as I settled into the driver's seat, I spotted a figure at the edge of the driveway watching me.
"Shit!" I ducked, but it was dead silent after that. When I lifted my head again, the figure was gone.
"What the...?"
The road ahead was empty and dark. I headed toward my mother's place. I couldn't go to Lucien, and I wouldn't drag Maya into Ronan's mess.
It became blurry and quite hard to focus through the dizziness.
A shadow moved inside the car. I jerked my head to the side and saw nothing but the empty passenger seat.
"You're seeing things, Camila. The starvation is catching up to you."
Then Lucien's face flashed in the rearview mirror, smirking at me. It twisted and became Ronan's cruel smile.
I screamed and swerved, yanking the wheel back. The mirror reflected nothing but darkness.
"None of it is real, Camila. None of it." But my heart pounded. I kept driving, because stopping meant being stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Heavy clouds rolled in, swallowing the sky. The air thickened. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
A figure appeared ahead, standing in the middle of the road, bent at an angle no spine should make.
"It's not real... It's not real... Don't stop..." I pressed the gas, screeching to the figure, and didn't stop until a sickening thud rattled through the car.
A strangled sound ripped out of me. The car skidded. Gravel sprayed as I pulled over.
My hands shook uncontrollably on the wheel.
I fumbled with the door handle and stumbled out onto trembling legs.
The road stretched out empty under flickering streetlights.
Nothing. No body sprawled on the asphalt. No blood smeared across the road. Just empty space mocking me.
But the car's front bumper was crushed. The hood caved in like something heavy had smashed into it.
"No. No, no, no." I turned in circles. "Where are you? Where did you go?"
I checked the shallow ditch, the trees lining the shoulder. Five minutes, ten, walking farther and farther until I could barely stand.
There was nothing to explain the damage to my car. I sagged against it.
"What's happening to me? What did they do?"
Three days of fear, little sleep, and no food. The hallucinations were chewing at my mind.
Or something worse was happening.
I climbed back into the car with tear-stained cheeks, forcing myself to keep moving because stopping meant thinking and thinking meant breaking down completely.
My mother's house. Just get home and figure everything out from there.
\---
Storm clouds thickened overhead. The first drops of rain hit the windshield as I pulled up to the small, run-down house.
One deep breath, then I stumbled out and up to the front door.
I knocked. "Mom? Are you home?"
The door swung open. It was unlocked.
A sour and rotten smell hit me immediately. The familiar stench of Clara's poor hygiene, but worse. Much worse tonight.
"Mom?" My voice echoed through the empty hallway.
Silence.
I moved through the dark house. Past the kitchen with its piled dishes. Past the living room with its sagging furniture. To her bedroom.
The door was ajar. A dim bedside lamp cast weak yellow light.
She was there on the bed, tucked under the covers, head on the pillow and both hands stretched out on top.
I shook my head. How could she possibly sleep through this stench?
"Mom, we need to talk."
She didn't answer.
I crossed to the wooden chair beside the bed and collapsed into it. The smell was overwhelming, but I'd expected that.
Then I saw the papers in her hand. Two pieces of paper. I pulled the first one free.
A check of thirty grand made out to Clara Sterling from Jessica Bloom.
A humorless breath left me. So Jessica had paid her off for the public humiliation. Expected.
The second was a note in Clara's cramped handwriting that slanted dramatically to the right.
"Camila,
By the time you read this, I'll be gone. And I'm glad to finally be free of the burden you've been since the day you were born.
I never recovered from giving birth to you twenty-five years ago. Your father used to think I was beautiful. He used to look at me like I was the only woman in the world. But after you came, after you tore me apart from the inside, he couldn't stand to look at me anymore.
The incontinence started first, and then the others followed. The constant pain. The shame of not being able to control my own body. Everything that made me hate myself and hate my life came directly from you!
You destroyed everything good about my existence just by being born. You took my body, my husband, my dignity, my future.
So now that I'm gone, I hope you suffer the way I suffered. I hope you feel the crushing weight of knowing that you killed me, just like you killed everything beautiful that my life could have been.
I departed hating you, Camila. And I'll hate you in whatever comes after this too.
Clara."
The letter trembled violently in my hands.
Gone?
I looked up slowly at my mother's face...